Another short post on impossible situations:
Here’s a rent arrears demand recently received by a woman who lives in a Basildon flat with her three young children (the arrears have increased since she received this letter).
It appears these arrears have come about because of the recently-lowered benefit cap.
This woman’s benefits exceeded the Out of Greater London limit of £384.62 by about £100 a week. As a result, at the end of last year, her housing benefit was cut by about £100 a week from about £188 a week to to £87 a week (think the sums are correct, looking at the paperwork. Give me a shout if you think the totals need looking at. Maths problems with these things are not at all uncommon).
Basildon council recently gave this woman a discretionary housing payment of £20 a week to cover some of the rent shortfall. That helps a bit, but only a bit. She only gets the DHP for the short term, too. After that, she either finds the full whack each week, or moves house again (this time with a serious arrears history) and takes the kids out of school again (she was recently in temporary accommodation in another borough)… or she ultimately gets evicted, I guess:
“I don’t know what to do,” she says.
I don’t really know what to do either, if I’m honest. Which is not particularly helpful.
What I do know is that I spend an awful lot of time these days with people in different parts of the country who show me demands for rent money they can’t pay and/or which say court and eviction are on the cards. As I write this, an email about a looming eviction in Haringey has landed in my inbox. I go to foodbanks and foodbank-lunches and inevitably end up talking to at least one person who is clutching a folder of letters about rent arrears.
Which leads me to wonder how many people live like this now: in rent arrears, always threatened and always in utter chaos. This ongoing lack of housing stability must be having a very destructive effect on a lot of minds and, in particular, on a generation of kids who live this way (Buzzfeed has just done a good piece on some of those effects). People go from temporary accommodation, to an accommodation option that they can afford until the next benefit change and/or financial disaster comes along and so on until – whatever. They never get to the point where things are finally sorted out.
Living with this kind of chaos makes organising the rest of life very difficult, too.
Like quite a few single mothers I talk with, the woman in this post is looking for training and work (work that will allow her to fit in proper care for her kids, that is) and asking her jobcentre for training courses she can fit around childcare and school hours.
Like quite a few single mothers I talk with, she’s doing this while getting the kids to school, racing round to the council benefits office with arrears letters, holding the usual longwinded and bitter phone conversations with landlords and oversubscribed benefit officers, and getting more and more wound up all the time. Just getting through on the phone to some councils can take an absolute age and when you do get through – usually by now at the end of your rope – officers say that rules are rules and that people must comply.
That’s the reality. Meanwhile, the arrears grow and eviction looms. Dealing with all of this becomes a full time job, not to mention a monumental headfuck. I see people lose it over housing problems all the time.
So.
I realise that a lot of voters absolutely love the benefit cap. I also realise that this post is likely to excite the usual cries of Get A Job and Where’s The Father and Why Should I Pay Other People’s Rent and so on.
I’d like to throw another idea into the mix. Might as well. I’d like to suggest that people would have a better chance of organising themselves into the training and work the political class so fetishises if they had stable, decent and cheap (as in REALLY low rents) housing to settle in and get organised from. Trying to get it together on the government’s terms while dragging kids from housing agents to housing offices to jobcentres and with eviction drawing ever nearer is not quite the picnic that the political class imagines. I know that society these days likes to see single mothers grovel, but – yeah. Maybe it’s time that society found other ways to amuse itself. How about making a few bankers grovel.
Feel free to email me with any constructive suggestions I can pass on about this situation. Some people have suggested charities to apply to for support money, etc.
The British Gas Energy Trust is a charitable Trust and is referred to as “the Trust” throughout this form.
The Trust can help you to clear debts for domestic electricity and gas.
The Trust can sometimes help you to clear other priority debts and purchase essential household items. You can apply for such help even if you do not apply for help with your electricity or gas debts. https://bget.app.charisgrants.com/forms/start contact these people http://z2k.org/
Thanks will pass that on
Spartacus Network report in response to Improving Lives: Health, Work and Disability Green Paper
“Spartacus Response to the Ministerial Foreword
This Government is not determined to build a country that works for everyone. It is determined to build a country where virtually everybody works as units of productivity for the benefit of the State, regardless of the damage and danger to the individual’s health. A disability or health condition very much dictates the path a person is able to take in life. Often a person’s talents can’t be unlocked or fully utilised due to the nature of their disability or
health condition. No amount of determination or aspiration will change this, and it is distasteful that within the opening paragraph of the Ministerial Forward the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions considers it appropriate to comment on the determination or aspiration of sick and
disabled people.”
https://spartacusnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/richardsonbenstead-smokescreen-2017.pdf
Don’t seem to be able to reply to article so..
Please remember these responses as plausible answers to the standard heckles
Brown person Go Back Home: Bradford, really?
Single mom: Where’s the Dad? Knocked down by a bus.
Disabled person You’re a Scrounger: Swap for a week? Hold still so I can break your legs.
Any of us, for any of the lies: Can you please write that down? Only I’d get more for libel than slander..
Given that truth seems to have been a casualty long back, plausible is good enough?
Kate
The figures read broadly correct though I think the maximum weekly HB is £92.43 and not what the decision says at £87.68 which is an inconsequential point.
The problem with the overall benefit cap and its 23% reduction of £500 per calendar month is that the only escape is to work 16 hours per week for a lone parent which even at minimum wage sees Working Tax Credit paid which then exempts from the cap. Yet this also presumes (a) the parent is able to work and (b) the provision of child care is available.
Data on those already capped shows more households are in receipt of ESA (wrag) and what we used to call Incapacity Benefit than there are in receipt of JSA and thus able to work. ESA (wrag) receipt means able to work in up to 2 years and with support.
The same existing data reveals 59% of those capped are lone parents with preschool age children and thus they are not expected to work yet still capped.
IF this mum can’t find work, she will be evicted and will likely be placed in temporary homeless accommodation until she does find work which is the only way to leave the allegedly temporary homeless accommodation. Yet that still will only happen IF any landlord (including social landlords) is willing to accept the risk that she will not lose the job as if she does she will still only get the same £87 per week in HB and go through the whole arrears to eviction to homeless process again.
Cheers Joe.
This is key:
“IF this mum can’t find work, she will be evicted and will likely be placed in temporary homeless accommodation until she does find work which is the only way to leave the allegedly temporary homeless accommodation. Yet that still will only happen IF any landlord (including social landlords) is willing to accept the risk that she will not lose the job as if she does she will still only get the same £87 per week in HB and go through the whole arrears to eviction to homeless process again.”
This family has already once been in temporary accommodation so there’s a real revolving door going on here… homelessness/temporary accommodation/placement/arrears because of caps, etc/homelessness
Whole lot of kids growing up this way now
The long and the short of it Kate is that rents, all rents, including the so called ‘social’ rents are just to high. I’ve was recently stimulated to take a look at my own rent, and looking back over the years the rent for my housing association flat has increased way beyond the rate of inflation. Since 2008 my rent has increased by a massive 56%, (prices have increased by around 25%) and in the past five years alone, my rent has gone up by 34%. I was prompted to look at my rent, as this years rent hike is a very sobering 10.52%.
I guess that I’m fairly fortunate that I am able to cough up the cash, (I am not entitled to Housing Benefit at the moment, which makes me doubly sensitive to rent levels, and, especially, rent increases). I’ve lived in my flat for 27 years now, the rent when I moved in was £30 a week, and is currently £84.95, but if this year’s increase goes through, (I’ve contacted various AMs in the Welsh Assembly) it will rise to £93.89. I know that sum may sound extremely reasonable by London standards, but it is still very high, in comparison with what it would have been if the rent had increased by inflation alone since 1990, which would be around £67 a week.
Private landlords, we know, are basically parasites, but what about so called social landlords? Why do they think they are justified in charging ever more expensive, and quite frankly, unaffordable rents? They know that ultimately their rents are completely unaffordable without the help of Housing Benefit, but how long is it going to be before the government decides it’s onto a good thing and lowers the benefit cap still further, or brings in legislation that sees the housing element of UC lessened, or raises the age limit where a single individual is only eligible for the single room in a shared house until age 45?
Increasing rents are just going to lead to increasing levels of homelessnes and severely disrupted family lives.
I think that someone, somewhere needs to go back and study how some local authority housing was financed in the so called bad old days. 60 year loans were taken out at low rates of interest, backed by the state. This meant that houses could be built, and rented out at an affordable rent, due in part to the long pay back period. Once the housing stock was paid for, the local authority had a valuable asset, and people had decent, affordable homes.
I don’t know how affordabilty is worked out, but in terms of rent levels there needs to be a huge sea change. I was slightly involved in housing issues in the early to mid 90s on the tenant side of things, and it was quite interesting and telling that at the time Shelter Cymru were suggesting that rents should be no more than 25% of incomes. At the same time, the Welsh Tenants’ Federation stipulated that rents should be no more than 15% of incomes, (I’m assuming in both cases, ‘average’ incomes were bench marks) – I know which figure I favour. In any case, that would give some kind of figure to base things on, and from that a kind of cost multiplier could be worked out so that some scheme of affordability could be worked out, on say an aggregate of a low weekly rent multiplied by a factor of 60 years, (making assumptions about inflation, incidental costs, and contingencies etc) and come up with a final figure that indicates a sum that can reasonably be spent on the construction of such housing.
Now, I may be way off the mark in my formula above, but there has to be a start somewhere in the debate about decent, affordable housing, as we seem to be having the wool pulled over our eyes in terms of housing finance. RSLs are increasingly part of the problem, not of the solution with their ever increasing rent levels model of housing provision.
One can’t ignore the political aspects of this issue either, and whilst one would expect the Nasty Party behave as they do, the deafening silence from Corbyn & Co makes one indeed wonder if they are even aware of desperate situation of truly affordable housing, as defined by tenants, and not by ‘do gooders’. Perhaps it’s time to go on the offensive with the issue of social housing? Making it a key issue in all local and constituency politics, so that politicians, especially those of the left, cannot ignore the issue any more. We can’t afford to vote Labour next time and hope that things will magically change, because they won’t. We need action now. Whilst it might be hard for those actually dealing with the threat of homelessness to take a stand, those of us who are not in such a predicament, and others who care, can contact our local representatives on a regular basis and ask them what they are doing towards increasing the amount of really affordable social housing being built. And keep up the pressure, create a blog where responses, (or not!) from local politicans are recorded, yes, I mean ‘name and shame’ as it’s the only way I can think of that will get most of them to get their finger out.
In my current situation, I contacted 3 Welsh Assembly AMs. two Plaid Cymru, and one Labour – it was the Labour representative who replied, which is very telling, I don’t vote Labour, but I usually vote Plaid Cymru… I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to vote Labour, but my vote for Plaid Cymru is really in the balance… I think I may well vote ‘None of the Above’ next time!
We need decent affordable homes for people, with the accent on ‘homes’ preferably in the centre of things and not on some periphery that is miles from the services we all need. Maybe we need to do as the citizens of Vienna did in the aftermath of the Great War, and descend on the parks in our thousands, picks and shovels in hand to dig the foundations of the People’s housing. It changed things in Vienna, a city where even today rents are reasonable and affordable – contrast the picture described in the link below with that of contemporary London, or any other city in the UK come to that!
https://www.wien.gv.at/english/housing/promotion/pdf/socialhous.pdf
It doesn’t, unfortunately offer the rapid solutions that are sorely needed, but maybe it can inform the much needed debate so that we never find ourselves in a similar situation ever again.
Absolutely. There has to be a way of generating housing without generating the screaming rents that are taking everyone out.
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I am utterly stunned at the weekly rent of £93.89 as said by Padi Phillips above. But then to point out that it was a reasonable amount by London standards was shocking. I am lucky to live in Scotland & also have a mortgage that is a minimal amount that is soon coming to its end, even then it is difficult to make ends meet.
I can only say how sorry I feel for these people & especially if they have children. It was difficult to live before the cap so how are they going to manage now with prices already rising due to brexit.
Many would regard that as a ‘reasonable’ amount in Cardiff too, when compared to private sector rents. Somehow in the minds of people the market price of things has become the benchmark of what is reasonable, completely getting away from the fact that often the market value has no relationship whatsoever with the true cost of things.
It’s also paradoxical that those who are critical of such ‘low’ rents as mine are often those can only manage to pay the inflated levels of rent charged by private landlords with the help of extended credit, which of course benefits only the landlords and the banks, who then jack up the rents further, and on goes the insane cycle, until a crisis comes along, which, as we know, is always a case of when and not if with capitalism, when those who lose their jobs as a result of the crisis are then made homeless, and their former homes quite possibly allowed to stand empty.
Surely it should be that housing is seen as a fundamental, as important to us all as is our NHS, and as such should be something that is ours as of right, even to the point of giving it to some people for nothing, where there is a need.
I live in a modest 2 bedroom HA property in a semi-rural old mill town in the North of England. When I moved here in December 2008 the rent was £83 p/w with service charges and water of £6 on top. April last year the rent had risen to £98 with service charges and water of £11. I used to be able to adequately heat and light my home for £15 pw, now I cant afford to heat at all except for the odd hour on only the coldest days. Private rentals in that time have rocketed from an average £250pm to £450pm for a 1 bed flat and from £350pm up to £600pm for a 2 bed. I live in fear of losing the right to live here when my daughter moves out as before I got this house I had moved 8 times in 15 years of private rentals. I can’t take that again.
Sadly, if you can get enough people to turn away from compassion and to tolerate cruelty, this is what you get. A society where foodbanks and evictions are the new normal.
So she gets £384 a week welfare + £20 = £404
and has to spend £100 on rent.
So has about £300 a week left to spend?
And can’t manage ???????.
Someones having a laugh.
“I don’t know what to do,” she says.
I do –
Stop moaning learn to budget your money,
Buy food in bulk – learn to prepare and cook all your own food from scratch –
No take-a-way crap
Maybe get a job for 16 hours a week to get your 100 pounds back – plus also keeping some (all ?) of the wages.
Move out of London to a cheap accommodation / high unemployment area and free up your flat for family that want to live and work in London
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I’m getting evicted on the 7th of November with my 5 kids for a benefit cap that doesn’t apply to me. I’m disabled and am in receipt of PIP! I really don’t know where to turn